What Elon Musk's plan to move SpaceX, X headquarters to Texas could mean for Bay Area, California

2024-07-17 18:35:01

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Elon Musk making worldwide headlines and again putting California in the spotlight.

Musk saying in a tweet he plans to move the headquarters of both X and SpaceX out of California to Texas.

In his tweet about this, he referenced California Governor Gavin Newsom signing a law that does not require school employees to tell parents if their child changes the gender they identify with.

Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday: “This is the final straw. Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move it’s headquarters from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas. And X, HQ will move to Austin.

“What we have to be really clear of here is to not overread into this, right? He said he’s going to move his headquarters. That’s a completely different conversation than moving the business lock, stock, and barrel from California to Texas which candidly, I don’t think he has any interest in doing.”

That from Christopher Thornberg who heads a California-based consulting firm called Beacon Economics. He says moving a main office like this out of state would likely mean anywhere from dozens of lost jobs to a couple hundred, not thousands of jobs lost.

“Is it going to move the needle here? Change things for the better? No. Is it going to hammer our economy and make us fade into a third world nation? No, this is just Elon being Elon,” says Thornberg.

Musk also later tweeted about X’s San Francisco headquarters, “have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.”

MORE: Former SpaceX employees claim illegal firings after they called out alleged gender bias, harassment

While the neighborhood may not be perfect, we didn’t see that at the X front door Tuesday.

When asked about the situation during ABC7 News at 3 p.m., San Francisco Mayor London Breed did not talk Elon Musk specifically, only saying this:

“I just came from the area where Twitter is located or X, whatever you want to call it, and in fact I’m in the area almost every single day round the entire block including the alleyway. It’s pretty much empty. Employees are not even coming back to work in the building and that’s part of the problem.”

Governor Newsom’s press office took to X after Musk made the announcement comparing California to Texas saying, “The last time Elon Musk moved an HQ, Tesla ended up expanding in California, even relocating their Global Engineering and AI headquarters to California because of diverse, world leading talent.”

Some though, still questioning if Musk will follow through on the move. A spokesperson with the commercial real estate company JLL only saying, “JLL has been hired to sublease X’s excess space at 1355 Market and all of the adjacent building, One Tenth Street.” No word on X’s current space.